EVANSVILLE - After a long day of intense spelling on Saturday, the only thing standing between Aaron Manning and the sweet taste of victory was the word "bellicose."

With the audience at Ivy Tech Community College's Vectren Auditorium silent, the Plaza Park Prep Academy seventh-grader exuded a relaxed confidence as he casually spoke into the microphone and coolly wrapped up the 2012 Tri-State Spelling Bee.

For Manning, a bespectacled 13-year-old donning a white dress shirt and tie, victory was the culmination of a lot of preparation.

"I just studied, studied, studied and studied some more," he explained minutes after receiving his first-place trophy. "Not every day, but about two days a week I go to Hebron (Elementary) after school and study with Miss (Rosie) Woodall. We just studied all the words. I've learned a lot from her about how language works — like how a lot of the double-l's in Spanish are pronounced like a "y."

With the victory, Manning earned the right to represent the Tri-State in the Scripps National Spelling Bee in late May in Washington, D.C. His expenses will be covered by the Courier & Press, a Scripps newspaper and the event's sponsor.

Manning outlasted 159 other elementary and junior-high contestants, all of whom began the day by taking a written examination.

"This is the first year we have implemented the written round in the morning," said Kathryn Gieneart, director of marketing at the Courier & Press and the spelling bee's director. "Everything went very well, very smoothly. The 22 who were finalists got 100 percent on their written tests. They all did a great job, and I couldn't be more pleased."

The drama unfolds

It looked initially as though the finale wouldn't last very long. Half the field fell by the wayside through the event's first four rounds. They were tripped up by words like "macaroni," "nightingale," "fresco" (the art of painting on freshly spread moist lime plaster with pigments suspended in a water vehicle), "lariat" (a long light but strong rope used with a running noose for catching livestock) and "henna" (a reddish-brown dye obtained from leaves of the henna plant).

Other early gremlins included "mesa," "crochet," "strudel," "contiguous," "intractable" and "barrage."

However, a handful of students — Manning, Blake Hicks of Carterville Intermediate School in Carterville, Ill.; Austin Burden of West Hopkins Middle School in Madisonville, Ky.; Kendra McDowell of Sturgis Elementary in Sturgis, Ky.; and Kate Hauersperger of Jasper Middle School in Jasper, Ind. — were still standing strong through 11 rounds.

But McDowell, a fourth-grader and easily the youngest of the final five, was eliminated on "endemic" in Round 12, and "jiva" — the vital energy in life, according to Hinduism — felled the hopes of Hauersperger, an eighth-grade student, in Round 14.

The surviving trio battled on until Round 17. Burden misspelled "lieutenant" and Hicks, an eighth-grader, missed "kuruma" — a small, light, two-wheeled passenger vehicle drawn by one man and originally used in Japan.

Manning calmly and correctly spelled "maladroit" to complete the round and then, with the event his for the taking, nailed "bellicose" to end it. He earned a round of applause for his efforts and congratulations from his mother, younger sister and sponsor Ken French, a social studies teacher at Plaza Park who runs the school's spelling bee competition.

'Hit and drill'

Woodall, a third-grade teacher at Hebron and Manning's twice-weekly tutor, was beaming afterward. She lauded Manning's dedication and noted the online nature of his preparation.

"We just hit and drill," explained Woodall, who has coached other Tri-State winners during her career as an educator. "But the thing that really helps is that we use dictionary.com or Merriam-Webster (www.m-w.com). They pronounce the words and give you some clues or signals. Sometimes you think you know how to say a word, but then you double-check it and find out that you don't know how to say it at all."

Hicks correctly spelled "mayonnaise" to win a spell-off against Burden and earn second place. If Manning is unable to attend the national event in the spring, Hicks will take his place.